


For I Was Blind

by Defira



Series: Wild Mage [7]
Category: Dragon Age, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-17
Updated: 2014-08-17
Packaged: 2018-02-13 13:42:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,611
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2152824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen is not a man with a spotless past, and that's a cause for concern to some people. A late night conversation ensues in the chantry at Skyhold.</p>
            </blockquote>





	For I Was Blind

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bioticbootyshaker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/bioticbootyshaker/gifts).



> For the time being, to be considered vaguely AU to Corinne's main story

The chapel was small and suited the needs of Skyhold adequately- the diversity of those stationed at the keep meant that there were a goodly number who did not abide by the words of the prophet, and while he might have preferred it otherwise some days, the Inquisitor herself had made it abundantly clear that Skyhold was to be a sanctuary for all. Even those who did not attend the holy services, or who held to their own heathen beliefs- she had welcomed them with open arms and that broad lopsided smile of hers.

There were times when he even had to privately question where her own beliefs lay, and on those occasions guilt and jealousy warred within him- that a woman so flippant and evasive in her own faith could be the tool of the Maker frustrated him, which of course led him to immense shame that he would even dare to question the plans set forth by his god. 

For now, he could serve to the best of his abilities, as he had always sought to do. And his guidance and counsel were best served at her side, in whatever capacity she sought to use them. 

The pews were empty at this hour, and the room was mostly in darkness; the stained glass windows seemed devoid of colour, sending weak silvery blotches of light across the floor. At the altar itself was a bronze icon of the beloved Andraste, her feet lost in a puddle of melted wax from the prayer candles placed lovingly at her skirts.

A handful of them were still flickering in the darkness, a cast of dancing shadows frolicking on the walls at their command. To the left of the icon was a shallow dish seated upon a pedestal, and within it a flame burned with no visible fuel source.

The eternal fire, the flame that represented the death of the prophet. He had no idea who had established the ritual here, but he was grateful for it. Tradition was one of the few comforts they had left in the world, after all.

He’d already selected his own candle from the offering box beside the door, and he took one of the waiting tapers and dipped it into the bowl of fire. After a moment the wick caught, flaring brightly for a moment as the paper took to the flame, and he carried it over to the icon, kneeling before Andraste.

His knees ached in protest, and he told himself it was the cold in the chapel to blame, and most certainly not his creeping age. 

The wax puddle was soft enough that he was able to secure his own to the mess, and he touched the taper to the wick, holding calloused hands around the tiny flame to give it time to grow. Once he was satisfied that it would not go out prematurely, he shook the taper off the the side, smoke curling around him as he settled in to reflect.

There was a faint pitter patter of rain on the windows, but otherwise it was remarkably silent for once. Skyhold was not a place for silence and contemplation, he had found, and he still wasn’t sure whether he hated it or loved it for that. In the confusion that was his daily life, dealing with the ever growing needs of an ever growing army, reading a dozen reports every hour and trying to write a dozen responses in half the time, training and fighting and then arguing about tactics over council sessions... well, when he had to face all of that day in and day out, it didn’t matter so much that the insomnia still lingered, or the night terrors still crept up before dawn, because if he was lucky he’d be too exhausted to dream, too worn to lay in bed and wonder if the shadows in his room held malicious eyes.

But without the silence, with no time or space to breathe, he had to wonder how much he could have overcome by now. Maybe he would’ve come to terms with the shadows in the room, and he wouldn’t need to work himself to the bone just to keep them out. 

He bowed his head and closed his eyes, taking comfort in this small moment of peace that had been afforded to him, lips moving in silent prayer as he felt weary relief settle over him like a cloak. 

“And who do you pray for at this late hour, Commander Cullen?” 

Cullen started, alarmed that someone had been able to creep up on him so carefully without his notice. He glanced over his shoulder towards the speaker, although he already knew who it was that had intruded on his quietude.

She sat one row back from the front, perched on top of the pew with her feet resting on the seat; she was leaning on her knees, one hand propping up her chin as she observed him with a curious expression on her face. 

He considered offering her a smile, but he had still to find his balance around her, and he did not know how a smile would be construed. “I pray for the safe return of the world as we know it,” he said, resting back on his feet, turning away from her and back to the candles. “Although sometimes I do wonder if even that is a selfish request.”

“Hmm.”

It was an odd response, and it threw him; he glanced back over his shoulder again, half turning to face her. “Herald?”

“I’ve asked you not to call me that,” she said quickly, sharply. With the candles flickering in her eyes it was hard to read her; it could have been anger in her face, or it could have been hunger. Exhilaration. She was hard enough to read most of the time as it was.

“Apologies, Inquisitor-”

“ _Corinne_ is fine, you know,” she said, something that could’ve been construed as mocking in her tone. “I’ve no need to stand on titles and protocol amongst my own people.”

He breathed out slowly at that, unsure if that was her way of extending trust to him, or whether it was a reprimand. “As you wish it, Corinne.”

She waved a hand in his direction, almost irritably. “Can you... not kneel? Or at least, not towards me?”

He raised an eyebrow at that, climbing to his feet with a wince at the pain in his hip mirroring the pain in his knees, and took a seat in the row in front of her. On the aisle, of course, as far from her as possible without being rude. She seemed to be in an odd mood this evening and he wasn’t sure what her intentions were in seeking him out. “Are you uncomfortable with shows of humility and servitude?”

There was no mistaking her mood this time. “I’m a _mage_ ,” she said pointedly, casting him a withering glare. “If I show any sort of preference for it, even _politely_ , I’m a filthy heretic blood mage, craving power and the subjugation of the masses and the desolation of heaven.”

He hadn’t even considered the word of the scriptures, and he kicked himself for it, face red. “Was there a particular reason you sought me out?” he asked instead, ready indeed for the encounter to be over. 

She shrugged, sliding down from the top of the pew and into the seat with a bump. “We haven’t talked much, you and I,” she said. “I feel it remiss of me not to at least attempt some measure of camaraderie with those who have... found their way to my banner, I suppose.”

Cullen blinked in surprise. “You want to be friends?”

Corinne scowled at him. “I’d like to know who you _are_ , at the very least,” she said, propping her legs up on the pew in front. “I mean, I’m a mage, you were a Templar-”

Ah. And there it was. “I can assure you, Inqui- I mean, Corinne,” he said quickly, correcting himself when she scowled again. “You will not have reason to question my loyalty to you in any regard.”

“I had a cousin in the Gallows, you know.”

His blood went cold. “Really?”

“No. But I might’ve kept up the lie, to see what apologies and excuses you’d offer.”

The heat came lurching back into his veins, angry now. “You would jest about something as painful as Kirkwall?”

She came sliding along the pew, coming to a stop just over his shoulder. When she leant forward, resting her arms on the wood beside him, it was all he could do not to shift petulantly another inch to the side, further away from her. “Oh, I’m so terribly sorry,” she said, her sympathy false and mocking, “what a terrible memory that must be for you. All those years of authority and comfort, three square meals a day, a warm bed waiting for you-”

“Do you have a point, _Herald?_ ” he asked, stressing the title that she had asked him to forget only minutes earlier.

“I wonder about your prayers, Commander,” she said, not even batting an eyelid at his frustrated response. “I wonder what it is exactly that you pray for.”

He breathed out heavily through his nose, trying to rein in his temper. “As I said when you first queried, I pray for the safe return of the world to normalcy.”

“The world as we know it,” she said, tapping her chin as if pondering his response. He thought for a moment she was trying to draw his attention to her lip, then wrote off the idea as his own madness. “Tell me, Cullen, what does a normal world look like to you, hmm? Once this is all but a memory, will you return to your duties and preach anew the place of people like me? Once this is done, will you be my gaoler?” 

She said it like she was offering him an intimacy, like it was something dark and private; he felt his ears burn, and he looked away hastily. She let out a noise that could have been a snort of laughter, but he didn’t trust himself to look at her. 

“Clearly you have already made an assessment of my character,” he said stiffly. “What can I possibly say in my own defence that you have not already planned a counter for?”

“Leliana and Cassandra speak highly of you,” she said, her tone a little more gracious now than it had been a moment before. “And Varric, well... he tells stories. Whether or not they are truthful accounts of events...”

She sighed. “But they are not mages, Cullen, and I am. And I am asked to lay my trust in a man who has lived through not one, but _two_ massacres of people like me. I know that you don’t utilise the mages within our ranks as often as you ought to when making suggestions during the war council, and I know that you are the last to seek out the assistance of the healers, if you do at all.”

He turned towards her, eyeing her carefully. “You have been paying attention, I see.”

She was resting her head on her arms, looking up at him. Her eyes were solemn, rich and dark and set aflame by the light of the candles. “I need to be,” she said bluntly. “That is my burden, as a mage. Trust is not something I can give you just because you want it.”

He didn’t say anything, because he didn’t have anything he could say in answer to that. 

“And I’d say this is a new situation for you, as well,” she continued, “having to acknowledge the worth and inherent humanity of a mage, of all people-”

That got a reaction from him. “Now, that’s not entirely-”

“Not fair? With what measure am I to judge you, Cullen? Am I to just ignore the atrocities that linger in the distance behind you, like ghosts of the unsettled dead? Or am I to smile and take you as you are now, and ignore the life you devoted to crushing people like me underfoot?”

She did not ask it with cruelty, or with malice- she did not say it to watch him squirm. There was an honesty in her face, and he realised it was a genuine query from her. She didn’t know how to trust him, not truly, and he had given her no reason to. There was no hesitation in her as she watched him, wide eyes solemn, but he was all at once struck by her youth.

She had carried herself with such absent-minded enthusiasm and confidence up ‘til this point that he had never thought to look beyond her place as Herald and Inquisitor. And yet she had to be younger even than Hawke had been, when he’d first encountered her in Kirkwall, and that was a good ten years ago now. 

“I...” He breathed out slowly, setting his pride aside for the moment. “I have no good answer for that.”

“A sensible answer, if a somewhat cowardly one.”

“I have not given you reason to trust me,” he said softly. “For that, I apologise sincerely. If you wish it, I will step aside-”

She scoffed loudly, and batted at his arm; he wasn’t exactly sure what the gesture was supposed to convey. “Where am I going to find a commander on short notice in the middle of the apocalypse?” she asked. “Especially one who has such good rapport with the soldiers.”

It was as close as she’d come to flattery, and he resisted the urge to preen. “As you will it, then.”

She smiled faintly, that lopsided expression he was so familiar with, and stood. “As I will it indeed,” she said cryptically, stretching languidly as she moved behind him and out into the aisle. 

He listened to her receding footsteps, and then turned around. “Corinne,” he called, and she stopped in her tracks, glancing back towards him. “Had you questioned whether or not you were going to keep me on?”

That smile again. “The thought had crossed my mind.”

He swallowed, uncomfortable now that the truth was laid bare. “May I ask how I might improve my service to you?”

She paused, fingers flexing at her side as she considered his words. “I would say that you make an excellent leader of men, but that you are too willing to follow,” she said finally, the words slow as if she were tasting each of them before speaking them aloud. “You lack the foresight to think for yourself, and you turn to others to guide you. That is why you are here, is it not? You are a remarkable soldier, but you are most comfortable when you are leashed.”

His jaw dropped.

“Get some sleep, Cullen,” she said, turning on her heel and heading for the door. “And come stop by my greenhouse if you’re still having those night terrors.”

He was left alone in the chapel, her footsteps echoing until the sound of the rain swallowed them up. He couldn’t remember the last time a mage had put him in his place- or had offered to help him in the same breath. 

For the first time, he felt he’d caught a glimpse of the woman beneath the titles, and it shook him how very human she made him feel.

He turned back towards the altar, and bowed his head anew. But his prayers were of a very different nature this time, and even if she did not share his view on faith, he could put his faith in her.


End file.
